Robert (Jesse Plemons) eagerly follows every order from his boss, Raymond (Willem Dafoe), until Raymond asks Robert to crash his car into a man referred to only as R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefanakos), killing him.  Daniel’s (also Jesse Plemons) wife, Liz (Emma Stone) has been missing and presumed dead on a research trip to a remote island.  Suddenly she reappears, but Daniel fears that the woman who returned is not his wife.  Emily (also Emma Stone) and Andrew (again, Jesse Plemons) are searching for the prophesized one so that they can bring her to the religious compound run by Omi (also Willem Dafoe) and Aka (Hong Chau).  Thus are the three moral fables and allegories of power spun by absurdist provocateur Yorgos Lanthimos. 

Kinds of Kindness is a 165-minute triptych that Lanthimos co-wrote with Efthimis Filippou, reuniting with his frequent collaborator for the first time since The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017).  The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival before embarking on a limited theatrical release from Twentieth Century Studios.  Each with their own flair, the film is broken up into three distinct parts that operate as their own separate short films: “The Death of R.M.F.,” R.M.F. is Flying,” and “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich.”  Despite coming so close on the heels of Lanthimos’ and Stone’s celebrated Poor Things (2023), Kinds of Kindness harkens back to his formative work in Greece and his early English-language features. 

In the first story, Robert is tasked by his boss to cause a car accident and kill R.M.F.  It is an absurd request from what appears to be an otherwise white-collar employer, but Raymond has controlled every aspect of Robert’s life and rewards him with one-of-a-kind sports memorabilia in addition to the ability to afford an opulent lifestyle, up to an including his marriage to Sarah (also Hong Chau).  The story does not go very deep, and like much of Lanthimos’ work, the rules of the world are seldom explained but must be followed and accepted by the audience nonetheless, yet “Death” does feel fresh in the oeuvre and full credit of that goes to Plemons.  His style fits well into Lanthimos’ world view and the actor is never afraid to self-flagellant himself in front of the lens which is almost a requirement for the men in Lanthimos’ films, but what makes Plemons so magnetic in this role is that he never feels completely weak despite constantly being knocked down and pushed around.  It is almost humiliating, but mostly absent of malice so it becomes captivating to watch him navigate this fraught dynamic with Raymond. Throughout the three films, Plemons plays a character who is slowly losing his grip on the reins, and we, in the safety of our seats, are witnessing the scramble.  It happens for Robert after he meets Rita (Emma Stone), but soon after she ends up in the hospital with a story eerily similar to Robert’s; she, too, was asked to crash her car into a man.  Finally standing up for himself, Robert makes good on his originally assigned task to find R.M.F. and kill him.  The scene does not run long relative to the runtime of the film, but it does feel like overkill even though it is utilized for humor in that traditional Lanthimos way. He is beating a dead horse, whereas his prior work, of which Kinds of Kindness seems to be harkening back to, was much more surgical and precise. 

The next story finds Daniel struggling to cope with the disappearance and presumed death of his wife.  With the hard and sudden transition, as with all anthologies, it takes a moment for audiences to reacclimate themselves, leaving what they just saw behind and diving head first into a brand new story.  Kinds of Kindness does not bother with an overarching framing device and instead presents itself like a series of programmed short films playing out one after the other after the other.  Soon enough, though, we begin to pick up on what we need to know about “Flying,” and we are rewarded with the most interesting concept of the three.  It plays out in a horror-adjacent realm similar to something out of The Twilight Zone as once Liz comes back, Daniel goes into an absolute tailspin convinced that Liz is not the Liz he married but something else.  For everything that this setup, it does feel the most stale of the three as this chapter – and the film overall – turns in to its second half, Stone begins to become the focus and brings little in the way of new or exciting energy the way Plemons did.  There is a long history in film of directors and their muses, and while Lanthimos is always able to dream up a new environment to place Stone, we are not truly breaking any new ground.  We luck out, though, as Daniel’s is still the lens through which this story is told and he begins to test her with more and more absurd tasks, culminating in asking that she begins to cut off parts of her body – a finger, a liver – and serve them to him.  She complies with this test of love and fealty, ultimately to her death.  Of the three, it is the most fable-like, and we never quite know if we believe what we are seeing or if we believe Daniel that the Liz that showed up is not the Liz that was stranded and lost on the island… that is, until, the doorbell rings and Liz is standing there at the door. It is a wild reveal, especially as a disembodied Liz, sitting in the living room, is still in the frame, but Lanthimos ends his tale here, right at its climax. 

The final story, in which “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” is one with the deepest amount of lore involved, which also makes Lanthimos’ requirement to accept his films at face value before they can be dissected most apparent and really tests his audience’s patience and willpower.  It follows Emily and Andrew as they scour Los Angeles for a sorcerer who has been prophesied by Oni and Aka, the leaders of a seaside-based cult.  We get an idea about the pillars of the cult, but we do not get enough to feel complete.  Same with how the woman they are searching for fits into all of this, but ultimately, that is just the excuse to get Emily away from the compound.  Emily will often leave Andrew in the evening to visit her husband, Joseph (Joe Alwyn), and their young daughter (Merah Benoit), a rendezvous that is forbidden by Oni and Aka eventually leading to her excommunication from the cult.  Now, it needs to be stated that the real reason for her removal is because Joseph drugged and raped her the night before, but any sexual intercourse outside of that with Oni or Aka is strictly forbidden.  To get back in the good graces of the leaders, Emily is more determined than ever to find the acolyte. Eventually, she finds her through a convoluted path that again highlights an extreme request, but “Sandwich” also ends with the most cruel twist of irony of the three. It is one of the most developed tales in Kinds of Kindness but because it hinges so much on Stone, who also is stuck playing the least interesting character in this tale and the film overall, it makes for a very rocky ending to another otherwise moderately enjoyable experience. 

Kinds of Kindness is a strange film, not just because it comes from the minds of Lanthimos and Filippou, but because it never quite settles on what it wants to be. When it is at its best, it is a comedy of manners as told by the Brothers Grimm, but even then it is flashes of brilliance surrounded by the muck. Its saving grace is that the film is always interesting and there is always something going on, if not in front of the lens, then peripherally or thematically, so we always come back to giving Lanthimos the benefit of the doubt that he is laying plans towards something grander. To make the leap and find a throughline connecting these stories about a mysterious R.M.F. would be a difficult if not impossible task, so it never quite shakes the feeling that we are seeing drafts and idea boards of concepts that never got teased out into feature-length. For fans of Lanthimos and his worldview, Kinds of Kindness can serve as a fascinating peak behind the curtain, but for those who have a more fraught relationship with the auteur, it will prove to be a very frustrating and incomplete venture.